| Science fiction writers dream of teleportation: Stand in a special spot, turn into sprinkles, arrive on an alien planet. (And just, whatever instructions the teleportation machine operator gives you, follow them exactly.) Physicists dream of teleportation too, and in this excerpt from Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe, physicist Daniel Whiteson and roboticist and PHD Comics cartoonist Jorge Cham team up to describe how instantaneous travel to remote stars is … pretty much out of the question. But! Don't give up hope. "What if we didn't transport you, your molecules, or your particles? What if we just transmitted the idea of you?" Give that a moment to reverberate: What if you could be scanned and copied and sent to the Jezero Crater as an exact replica of yourself. Would you still be you? The answer, slightly, depends on how much your you-ness relies on quantum information. That question is philosophical more than physical, yes, but that hasn't stopped scientists from trying—they've already managed to teleport single particles between two points 1,400 kilometers apart. Clearly, a quantum copy machine isn't going to beam you to Mars any time soon, but hey, it's a start. Sarah Fallon | Deputy Editor, WIRED |
